Yahoo! News: All the crazy news that fits and more gun nuts

Yahoo! News … man, can’t open my e-mail until I read Yahoo! News. You can read all sorts of crazy stuff on Yahoo! News. Everything from who Charlie Sheen is shacking up with now to Keira Knightley being an atheist and Jennifer Anniston’s leather dress.

Listen, Jennifer Anniston has posed absolutely nude, hiding all her lady parts of course, but still, the leather dress … eh. What they really wanna know is: does Anniston wear her leather dress better than Kanye West wears his leather skirt? Seriously, does anyone give a damn? After looking at the photos, both are fashion no-no’s.

Puh-leeze! I used to watch “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy” religiously. I’d like to think I’ve grown in my knowledge of fashion.

Then there is the serious news, like the teenager who opened fire on his high school using a shotgun. Only one person was actually shot and two other injuries were a pellet in a teacher’s face and a girl who lost her hearing from being too close to the muzzle when the gun went off. The shooter surrendered and is now in police custody.

Yahoo! News even has snippets on Vice President Joe Biden’s gun control task force. On Wednesday he met with pro gun control groups and Thursday he met with members of the gun lobby, like the NRA. Their president, David Keene, dismissed the meeting with the vice president, saying the administration could check them off the list of people to meet. Apparently the gun lobby isn’t interested in trying to stop or diminish gun violence in our nation.

It appears banning assault weapons will be part of the vice president’s proposal. I’m curious to see just how they address the millions of Bushmasters and AR-15’s that are already in the hands of the American public, legally. Anyone who thinks a majority of the people who own assault weapons will voluntarily give them up in some mass buy-back or confiscation program is more starry-eyed than me when I’m gazing upon Miss April 2010 Amy Leigh Andrews. Let me tell you, I get pretty starry-eyed whenever I see Ms. Andrews.

As the saying goes, that genie is out of the bottle and it ain’t going back. It would be easier to herd cats.

Oh, and did you read about this guy? I didn’t see it on Yahoo! News, itself, but it’s an eye-opener. A Tennessee man posted a video saying it was time to start killing people because the president said he can use executive orders to deal with some gun control issues. “If this goes one inch further I’m gonna start killing people,” he says in the video and you know it’s serious because the first words out of his mouth are, “Fuck that.” You go, girl!

The killer man is CEO of Tactical Response, James Yeager, and he told others like him to, “load your damn mags,” and “get ready to fight!”

Yeah, there’s a guy who should have firearms: someone whose first response is to start killing people. Well, actually, his first response is to make a video threatening to kill people … that he then walked back in a video the next day. He didn’t really mean he thought people should start committing felonies … I guess he forgot to add “j/k” to his first rant.

And then there is the not-so-serious masquerading as serious, like this little chestnut: “White House Denies Petition to Deport Piers Morgan.”

What? Deport Larry King’s replacement? What the hell did he do? Molest someone? Get caught shoplifting at Barney’s? Urinate on the steps of City Hall? What? I mean, it’s gotta be serious to petition the president to deport the guy. You know, pissing on the steps of City Hall seems reasonable to many people, but apparently it isn’t.

No, nothing like that. In fact if you’re reading this and hadn’t heard about it yet you’d think this was a joke. I assure you it isn’t. Remember, we live in a country where a dimbulb like Michele Bachmann serves on the House Science Committee. There’s really nothing beyond the pale in America anymore.

If that wasn’t enough of a mind-blowing dichotomy (at least), this oxymoron will blow your mind: Bachmann is also on the House Intelligence Committee.

What got over 100,000 people to sign a White House petition demanding the British citizen (Piers Morgan) be deported was his stance against assault-style weapons and the means to shoot hundreds of rounds in the course of a minute.

You see, there’s this crazy guy on the radio — well, there are a lot of crazy guys with talk radio programs — but this one, Alex Jones, has a web-only radio show and was invited to be on Piers Morgan Tonight. The reason being Morgan wanted to ask this crazy man about the petition to have Morgan deported. Most of the interview had little to do with the petition, but Jones went on a series of rants about the government (under George W. Bush) being the perpetrators of 9-11, the rampaging hordes of hooligans destroying Great Britain, fluoride in the water — seriously, are we back to that? — and the “suicide mass murder pills” being distributed in America. That would be meds like Prozac.

But then Jones got down to it: Piers Morgan is a stooge, a lackey, a “hatchet man of the New World Order!” And the reason Jones wants Morgan deported is because Morgan relies on “factoids” when he advocates for things like banning assault weapons for civilian use. Morgan doesn’t pay attention to the other issues …. you know, like the vast One World Order conspiracy.

So, Alex Jones started one of those White House petitions to have Piers Morgan deported and as we all know the president promised to address all petitions that meet the threshold of 25,000 signers within 30 days. This “Deport Piers” petition got over 100,000 backers.

The result of Jones’ actions is the White House was required to respond. And this is why I took notice. After all the years of Rush Limbaugh and all the Limbaugh wannabes going insane in the public eye, we really don’t take much notice of them anymore. Well I don’t. I have a friend, long time friend no less, who listens to a couple of them right wing nut radio hosts, Limbaugh and Roger Hedgecock in particular. My friend and I have long since stopped talking politics so there’s no comment here.

Anyway, who can keep up with all the craziness on Right Wing Nut Radio anymore? And it’s gone really ballistic ever since Barack Obama was elected president. There’s been so much doom and gloom predicted, from the U.S. becoming a European style Socialist country to being turned over to Muslim terrorists by the president himself — he’s one of them, don’t’cha know — really, people just got tired of hearing it and therefore tend to ignore it all. That was evident during the campaign before the president was re-elected.

So there was Jay Carney in the White House Press Briefing Room delivering to the “gaggle” this very unimportant message, a message he had to give because, you know, his boss promised to respond to every petition that met the threshold of 25,000 signatures within 30 days.

“Thank you for participating in We the People to speak out on an issue that matters to you. Let’s not let arguments over the Constitution’s Second Amendment violate the spirit of its First. President Obama believes that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. However, the Constitution not only guarantees an individual right to bear arms, but also enshrines the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press — fundamental principles that are essential to our democracy. Americans may disagree on matters of public policy and express those disagreements vigorously, but no one should be punished by the government simply because he or she expressed a view on the Second Amendment — or any other matter of public concern.”

Carney should be given an award for delivering the speech with a straight face, without showing any contempt for the moron who started the petition, for not rolling his eyes. Speaking to the nutty ideas of a wing nut like Alex Jones can’t be high on Carney’s list of things to do, especially if he’s not allowed to afford this nonsense the amount of respect — or disrespect — it deserves.

On the other hand though, you can’t let all these crazy people go without notice or comment. Yeah sure, Alex Jones’s ideas are so nutty he can only get a web-only radio show, but he got 100,000 people to sign the petition. He could inspire someone to do something crazy.

And who knows how big an audience James Yeager has watching his videos. It’s a good bet Yeager has caught the attention of the FBI and ATFE, which he probably figured out shortly before deciding to record his second video walking back his remarks.

In their 2010 report titled “Rage on the Right,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said anti-government, anti-Obama “patriot militias” grew by 250 percent. Domestic terrorist groups have been arrested for planning attacks on law enforcement and some individuals have even tried to carry out their terrorist plans. People like Yeager and Jones don’t operate in a vacuum.

Nearly four years ago an 88-year old White Supremacist, James W. von Brunn, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Museum and opened fire killing a security guard, Stephen T. Johns. Brunn had a list of targets on him when he was taken into custody, after other security guards at the museum shot him.

A year later a Michigan-based militia steeped in the craziest conspiracy theories was arrested before they could carry out their plans to try and start a race war in America. And of course their plan to do that started with killing law enforcement officials.

These are just the more memorable instances of politically and socially motivated violence. The argument can be made we had more of this type of violence in years past so maybe this hasn’t reached a tipping point, but that’s a “yet” we really don’t want to experience.

The fact is there’s far more violent rhetoric today then during the Clinton Era, when we had lone killers blowing up health clinics and killing health care providers. The worst act of domestic terrorism took place in Oklahoma City, OK, April 19^th, 1995 when Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that he built with his friend Terry Nichols. They killed 168 people, including 20 children in a day care, and injured 680 more.

The question that tugs at me is this: how many more domestic terrorists are there who are ready to follow in the footsteps of McVeigh and Nichols? April 19  is about three months away, a national holiday for the violently anti-American “patriot” militias. And now that the president they hate the most has been re-elected and will take the oath of office for a second time a week from today (Sunday, January 13, 2013), it wouldn’t be alarmist to think some of these people are now over the edge.

I don’t know. Maybe the president could throw them a bone and deport Piers Morgan. It’s not like Morgan has a large audience — he’s on CNN after all.

One last tidbit of news from the digital pages of Yahoo! News: An Alabama-born, Brooklyn resident was crowned Miss America Saturday Night, Mallory Hagen. Her issue is ending child sexual abuse, but her answer to a question about armed guards in schools probably gave her a boost: she’s against the idea.

The pageant took place in Las Vegas, NV at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. Remember the good old days when the Pageant was held in Atlantic City, NJ? It moved to Vegas in 2006. Who was that old guy that used to sing the Miss America Song? Oh yeah, Bert Parks.

Years ago as a young sergeant in the Marine Corps, I was hospitalized during the holiday season for a while due to some severe injuries. One of the USO-sponsored groups to stop by U.S. Naval Hospital, Kuwae, Okinawa, was Miss America 1977 Dorothy Benham and her entourage, which included the four runners-up.

Their visit did a lot for those of us in that hospital, as did all the USO-sponsored visitors. Whatever faults there may be with beauty pageants there is this: the Miss America pageant performs some quiet, under-reported acts of service and mercy. I’ll always be grateful for that.

One last tidbit from Yahoo! News to report: the White House has responded to the petition asking our government to build a Death Star. Yeah, that evil weapon from the first Star Wars movie.

Paul Shawcross, chief of the White House Budget Ofiice’s Science and Space Branch, shared this with the petitioners: “The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but the Administration does not support blowing up planets. Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars (estimated to be $853 quadrillion) on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?”

Yeah, but that one man has to be a Jedi Knight like Luke Skywalker! These government officials; don’t they know nuthin’?

Tim Forkes

Tim Forkes started as a writer on a small alternative college newspaper in Milwaukee called the Crazy Shepherd. Writing about entertainment issues, he had the opportunity to speak with many people in show business, from the very famous to the people struggling to find an audience. In 1992 Tim moved to San Diego, CA and pursued other interests, but remained a freelance writer. Upon arrival in Southern California he was struck by how the business of government and business was so intertwined, far more so than he had witnessed in Wisconsin. His interest in entertainment began to wane and the business of politics took its place. He had always been interested in politics, his mother had been a Democratic Party official in Milwaukee, WI, so he sat down to dinner with many of Wisconsin’s greatest political names of the 20th Century: William Proxmire and Clem Zablocki chief among them. As a Marine Corps veteran, Tim has a great interest in veteran affairs, primarily as they relate to the men and women serving and their families. As far as Tim is concerned, the military-industrial complex has enough support. How the men and women who serve are treated is reprehensible, while in the military and especially once they become veterans. Tim would like to help change that reality.

www.forkesreport.com